Monday, August 18, 2014

Beauty Box 5 - August 2014

As I mentioned in my Allure Sample Society post, I decided that instead of upgrading to a quarterly subscription of Beauty Box 5 I would try out Sample Society in August along with my BB5 and Ipsy subscriptions and then choose one of them to cancel for September. I really enjoyed my Allure Sample Society box, so while this wasn't necessarily a bad month with Beauty Box 5 I do think I'm going to cancel my subscription for the time being. That said, I still need to show you what was in my August box.

I only knew what the one spoiler item was in my box, and that was the full size .22 fl oz Nanacoco Lipgloss in Carmel Latte. I've never heard of Nanacoco before and am not sure where to find these glosses in retail stores, but did see a couple of online retailers when I searched in Google, including Amazon. The Carmel Latte shade I received is a very neutral brownish nude shade. These glosses retail for $3.99.

The second item in my box was a Style Essentials Nail Polish from their Touch of Teal Collection. This polish comes in a 4-pack and the only place I found it was on Beauty Box 5's website. There is no specific color name attached to this polish, but it seems to be kind of a holographic teal glitter in a clear base. I love getting nail polish in my subscription boxes, so my only complaint about this would be the lack of color name. The 4 pack of polishes retail for $7.00 which makes this single polish worth $1.75.

Next up was the La Fresh Travel Lite Facial Cleansing Wipes. I've seen these given out in other subscription boxes before but never received them myself so this is a new to me product. The wipes contain Vitamin E, aloe, and cucumber and say they are gentle enough for all skin types. I use wipes like this all the time when removing my makeup so I'm happy to receive more. This travel size packet of 8 wipes retails on La Fresh's website for $2.49.

The Fourth item in my box was the Roux Anti-Aging Hair Serum Leave in Treatment in a full size 4 fl oz container. The BB5 card lists the serum as having vitamins A & E, biotin, keratin, and UV filters. I'm interested to try this against my It's a 10 Miracle Leave in Treatment with Keratin and see how it compares to that. It is certainly less expensive than the It's a 10 and retails for $11.99.

Finally I received a Pur~lisse pur~protect Essential Daily Moisturizer SPF 30. I received this exact product in my July Ipsy bag. I've used that sample a few times and it works fine as a moisturizing sunscreen so I'm okay with getting another sample of it, just not too exciting to get a dupe which is one of the reasons I don't want to keep all 3 of my current susbcription boxes. After trying my Ipsy sample I also can't see myself repurchasing this as the 1.7 oz full size is $55, and I didn't notice anything about it that made it worth that much money to me. The .5 oz sample in my box is worth $16.17.

The overall value of this months Beauty Box 5 was $36.39. Not a bad box at all, though I did notice as I was unboxing it that several of the products were quite dirty and dusty. Nothing looked to be opened or used, it was just kind of gross to pull out dirty items. As I mentioned above I have decided to cancel BB5 for now though, it just isn't in the budget right now to get 3 boxes every single month, plus that increases the chances of duplicate products. I decided to stick with Allure Sample Society also because it's more high end products and I think I won't end up with many similarities to the products in my Ipsy bag. I will keep an eye on other unboxings of BB5 though and may subscribe again in the future. If you would like to subscribe to Beauty Box 5 yourself you can do so on their website, it's $12 a month for a monthly subscription, but the prices go down if you purchase a quarterly or annual subscription. Right now if you subscribe by August 21st you can still get August's box, which is a change to their usual policy of having to be signed up by the end of the previous month. I did unbox this on my Makeup Miscellaneous YouTube Channel. I've also embedded the video below.